“Okay,” another voice said, drawing out the “oh” sound with a tired drawl. Mac inserted herself between me and Emmett, forcing us apart in an impressive display of strength and determination. “I think that’s about enough. You’re in public, folks.”
Without the heat of Emmett’s body against mine, the air conditioning chilled my damp shirt, causing me to shiver. I glanced at Emmett over Mackenzie’s shoulder.
“We’ll take it somewhere private then,” he said.
“I don’t think so,” Mac replied. Though her tone was easy and relaxed, she staggered her feet at shoulder width, ready for pushback.
Emmett blinked. “Officer, I mean no disrespect, but you’re not on duty, and it’s not up to you whether two consenting adults—”
Mac cut him off. “She’s drunk. That line of consent is looking a little blurry to me, bud.”
Emmett half-laughed, half-scoffed. “Seriously?” He tilted his head to peer around Mac. “Bee, you want to leave? We can just go.”
I watched Mac’s shoulders rise beneath her T-shirt. Then I met Emmett’s eyes. He looked expectantly back. I dropped his gaze. “No, I don’t think so.”
For a second, he just stared at me. Then he lifted his shoulders in a shrug and stepped away. “Fine. That’s cool. I’ll settle the tab. See you later, Bridget. Officer Hart.”
“Mr. Marks,” she replied coolly, waiting until he’d crossed the bar before relaxing her position. Then she coaxed me down from the pool table. “I have a feeling being your friend is gonna feel more like work than fun.”
“Ouch,” I mumbled, letting her carry me out of the bar. “Excuse me, Officer Hart, but I did not ask you for your assistance.”
“Well, you got it anyway so shut up.”
Her car was parked on the curb across the street. This time, I didn’t protest when she opened the passenger side door and deposited me inside. I rested my head against the seat as she rounded the hood and got in on the other side. The engine turned over.
“Why do you care?” I asked sluggishly.
“About what?”
“You don’t even know me.” I looked up at the night sky as she pulled out into the road. The streetlights were too bright to see the stars in this part of town. “But you pull me out of bar fights. You make sure I don’t do stupid shit while I’m drunk. You breach police protocol knowing full well that you could lose your job over it. Seriously, it’s weird. No one’s this committed to some girl they met three days ago. You can’t possibly need a friend that badly.”
Mac was quiet as she steered the squad car down the vacant block. I was sure that her silence was due to the blunt nature of my question, but when I abandoned my hazy view of the passing storefronts to check on her, she appeared more sad than annoyed.
“Hello? You still with me?”
“Look,” she said. “Let’s just say I dealt with a similar case a few years ago.”
I took note of her strained knuckles clamped tight around the steering wheel. “It didn’t end well, did it? What happened?”
“You don’t want to know.”
As we turned a corner, my depth perception reminded me of how much I’d had to drink. I held my breath, contracting my stomach muscles, until the vertigo passed. “I’ve seen some pretty gruesome stuff.”
“It’s not that I believe you can’t handle it,” Mac replied. “I just don’t want to think about it. Let’s get you back to your motel.”
“No.”
“What?”
“Don’t take me there,” I said. “I don’t want to go there. Take me to Bill and Emily’s.”
The motel’s neon vacancy sign blinked up ahead. Mac braked as we approached. “It’s pretty late, Bridget. They’re probably asleep by now.”
“I don’t care. I need to talk to them.”
“Right this second?”
“Mac, I thought we were friends.”
She drove past the motel’s driveway and up the hill toward the neighborhood. “I’m so going to regret this, aren’t I?”
Mac’s squad car idled in the driveway as I pounded on the Millers’ front door. The surrounding fields swallowed the thunderous knocks. When the door opened, I fell over the threshold, stumbling into Bill’s chest. He grabbed me by both shoulders and propped me upright.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, girl?” he hissed.
Behind him, Emily stood at the foot of the stairs, drawing a robe on over her pajamas. Their brood of children peered into the living room. The whites of their eyes, along with Ryan’s bright blond hair, glowed in the dim light, like a family of raccoons waiting for the humans to disperse so that they could raid the fridge.
“Me?” I prodded Bill’s chest with the point of my index finger. “You! What were you thinking, Bill? You left Holly alone. You let her go out to that ball field all by herself. It’s your fault she’s gone. You can’t blame this on me.”
“Are you drunk?”
“No!”
“Jesus, you smell like the floor of a brewery.” He spotted Mac’s cruiser in the driveway. “The cops are here? God damn it, Bridget!”
“She’s my friend,” I declared loudly.
Emily ushered the kids away from the living room. “Kids, go upstairs.”
“And you!” I said, pointing to her. My voice rose to a dangerous volume. “I counted on you to take care of her. I don’t care how many kids you have in this damn house. Holly isn’t a source of income. She’s a person. She’s my person, and you let her go and get fucking kidnapped.”
“Hey,” Bill snapped, slamming a fist against the wall behind me. Emily jumped at the resounding smack of his skin against the wallpaper. “You lower your voice and watch your mouth. Don’t you dare speak to my wife that way.”
“I’ll do whatever I want!”
I tried to push past him, but right on time, Mac hopped up onto the front porch and seized a handful of my shirt. The collar tightened against my throat, and I bounced off of Bill to collide with the officer instead. She held firm, readjusting her grip so that her hand rested on my shoulder.
“Remember how I stop you from doing stupid shit when you’re drunk?” she muttered in my ear. Then she cleared her throat and spoke cleanly to the room. “Sorry, folks. I’ll get her out of your hair.”
“Thank the Lord,” Bill grumbled. “I’m glad to see she keeps more sensible company these days.”
“Shut up, Bill,” I barked as Mac steered me toward the porch steps.
“Wait,” Emily called. Everyone paused. I looked over my shoulder. Emily beckoned me inside. “Five minutes. You get five minutes in her room.”
Upstairs, I climbed the ladder to Holly’s top bunk and collapsed against her pillows. The scents of fresh laundry detergent and vanilla perfume wafted around me. Mac stood awkwardly by one of the bookshelves with her hands in her pockets.
“What exactly are you looking for in here?” she asked.
“Oh, I’ve already searched the room,” I admitted, my voice muffled by Holly’s comforter. “I snuck in yesterday.”
“Of course you did.”
I flipped over. Glow-in-the-dark stars decorated the ceiling, each one an unnatural green splotch against the white paint. I plucked one off the sticky tack that held it in place. “We put these up together.”
Mac squinted at the ceiling. “That’s nice. Bridget, what are we doing here other than annoying your foster parents?”
“Just give it a second.”
“Give what a second?”
An indescribable vibration began in my mind. This time, I recognized the precursor to my out-of-body experience before it actually happened. This time, I took a deep breath as the blood rushed to my head and Holly’s bedroom faded to make room for that other place in my mind.
“Bridget?”
“Shh.”
The other world was quieter now. No voices. I could only make out the familiar mechanic hum and, very faintly, the steady inhales and exhales of a sleeping person.
Mac stepped up on the first rung of the bunk bed’s ladder, peeking over the safety railing. “Hey, you’re kind of freaking me out.”
When I didn’t reply, she rested two fingers against the inside of my wrist.
“I’m not dead,” I told her.
“Yeah, but your heart rate’s way down. How much did you drink?”
My eyes fluttered shut as I tried to tune her voice out, but the sounds from the other room faded anyway. “It’s not the beer.”
And then my little sister’s voice echoed through the room. “Bridget?”
My eyes flew open. “Holly?”
Mac stared, wide-eyed, around the empty bedroom. “Yup. Okay. Now you’re definitely freaking me out.”
I sat up, nearly bumping my head against the ceiling as I clapped a hand over Mac’s mouth. “Shut up! Holly… is that you?”
“Help me, Bee. You gotta help me.”
“Holly, where are you?”
Mac freed herself from my grasp and waved her hand in front of my face. “Hey. Holly’s not here. You’re hearing things again.”
I ignored her. The feel of Holly’s presence was growing faint again. I could feel her slipping away. “Holly, answer me!”
“I don’t know, Bee. I don’t know.”
And then she was gone, the link between us severed. Mac’s face swam into focus, the moonlight reflecting off of her irises as she waited for me to float down to our side of reality.
“Welcome back,” she said.
The following morning hit me like a punch in the gut, but the overwhelming nausea wasn’t a product of my bender with Emmett. It was rooted in my head instead of my stomach, accompanied by a lingering sense of dysphoria. Last night, my connection with Holly had been real and vivid. I was convinced that she had made contact with me through a peculiar network of brain waves. Now, in the light of day and without the influence of several pints of beer, I recognized how silly the concept was, and embarrassment washed over me every time I remembered how adamantly I’d defended myself to Mac on our return drive to the motel.
I buried my face in the bed linens, trying to block out the sunshine that crept through the cracks in the vertical blinds. A layer of fuzz coated my tongue. My forceful exhale blew the sheets away from my face. Holly’s book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, rested on the bedside table with the spine facing toward me. I squinted at it. Within the title, a faded red pen had circled three letters: the first i, the first n, and the last a.
I brought the spine closer, running my fingers over the slight indentations that the pen had left. I’d never actually opened the book in Holly’s room. If I had, I would’ve automatically noticed the random letters that had been circled in red pen throughout the last three-quarters of the book.
The telephone crashed to the floor as I ransacked the bedside table for the motel’s complimentary notepad and pen. I uncapped the pen with my teeth, flipped to the first page with with circled letters, and began to write them out on the pad. After I’d finished the page, I reviewed the results.
It was gibberish, a collection of random letters rather than a cohesive message. I threw the book to the floor, where it landed cover-up, its pages sprawled out against the carpet. The spine was upside down, the three circled letters taunting me. A-n-i.
“Aunt Ani,” I breathed.
I jolted out of bed, hopping on one foot as the tangled sheets trapped my other ankle, and sat cross-legged on the musty carpet with the Holly’s book in one hand and the notebook in the other. This time, I flipped to the very last page and started with the letter closest to the bottom. Soon enough, it became clear that I was on to something. The letters arranged themselves into broken words, but it was as though half of the message was missing.
The motel phone rang, a harsh wake-up call for my earlobes. I yanked the receiver from the dock. “Hello?”
“It’s Autumn.”
“Hey.” I picked up the fallen dock and put it back on the bedside table. “Why didn’t you call my cell phone?”
“You never actually gave me the number.”
“I didn’t?”
“No, you bolted before we ordered our entrees yesterday, remember?”
The frostiness of her tone nipped at me through the receiver. “Yeah, sorry. I had some stuff to take care of.”
A whoosh of white noise signaled her answering sigh. “That’s bullshit, Bee. What’s your deal? You can’t even sit down for one meal with your best friend?”
“I can,” I replied. “But I didn’t sign up to have lunch with your boyfriend.”
“You’re mad because I invited Christian?”
“I’m not mad.”
“I didn’t tell you he was coming because I figured you would make up an excuse not to show up,” Autumn said. “I can see now that I was right.”
The phone cord stretched tight as I crossed to the dresser, where an Oak and Autumn shopping bag housed the rest of my new clothes. I rooted through it, extracting a top and another pair of jeans. “I’m sorry, okay? I have a lot on my mind. I’m sure Christian’s a great guy. I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
“When?”
I bit off the plastic tab that held the clothing tags in place. “Whenever you want.”
“Fine. Come to Christian’s show at The Pit tomorrow.”
I spat out the tab. “Autumn—”
“You literally just promised.”
“Yeah, but tomorrow’s my birthday.”
“I know. I didn’t forget.” Her voice softened. “Bee, it’s been ten years. I think it’s about time you stop blaming yourself for what happened to your parents and actually enjoy your birthday. There are plenty of reasons to celebrate your existence.”
“Name one,” I muttered, drawing the shirt over my head.
“I want you to be the baby’s godmother.”
I dropped the phone, and the taut cord yanked it across the floor, where it smashed into the base of the bedside table and hung like a limp rat from a dog’s mouth.
“Bridget?”
I rescued the phone. “Yeah, sorry. Hi. Seriously, are you sure? Because I’m about as far away from God as you can get.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” she said. “Look, it’s more of a formality than anything else. Christian wants to get her baptized. We need a godmother, and you were the first person I thought of.”
“Her?”
“Yeah, it’s a girl. I was going to tell you yesterday, but—”
“I bailed,” I finished. “I’m sorry.”
“You wouldn’t have to apologize so often if you stopped disappearing on everyone.”
“I’m still here, aren’t I?”
“For how long?”
I didn’t answer because I didn’t know. I wanted to see Holly come home—that was the only thing I could promise—but as soon as I did, how long would it be before I grew bored of Belle Dame again? This place took everything and gave nothing back.
“That’s what I thought,” Autumn said.
“Come on. That’s not fair.”
“It’s fine, Bee. I know you.” She cleared her throat. When she spoke again, she sounded more professional than friendly. “I didn’t call to scold you. I wanted to let you know that some girl left a message on my cell phone for you. It was really weird. I don’t even know how she got my number.”
My spine went rigid as I clutched the phone closer to my cheek. “What girl? What did she say?”
“Not much,” Autumn answered. “I could barely hear her. I think she said her name was Naomi?”
I pressed the phone so tightly to my face that it pinched the edge of my ear. “Noemie? Noemie Laurent?”
“Maybe.”
I yanked on the new pair of jeans one-handed. “Autumn, this is really important. What did she say?”
“I told you. Very little. She said she had a message for you, left her name, and then recited some sort of children’s poem.”
Chills wracked my body, causing the ha
ir on my arms to stand on end. “What was the poem?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Autumn!”
“God, what is your problem?” she demanded. “I saved the message for you. Come listen to it yourself, and in the future, it’d be really great if you didn’t give my number to complete strangers.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m at the store.”
“I’m coming over.”
I hung up before she could reply then finished dressing without looking in the mirror, rinsed my mouth out with tap water instead of actually brushing my teeth, and slipped my shoes into my sneakers without tying the laces. Then I tucked the green paper crane into Holly’s novel like a bookmark and left, slamming the motel door on the way out.
Chapter Twelve - No Future in the Past
The door to Oak and Autumn slammed against the frame and sent the collection of wind chimes ringing like angry birds. A few customers gave me dirty looks, but I ignored them, making a beeline for the back of the store where Autumn’s office was. As I fought through the bead curtain made of bamboo that separated the shop from the stockroom, Autumn emerged from her office. She reached above me, splitting the bead curtain in two to free me from its inhuman grasp, then drew me into her office, where her customers were no longer privy to my wild antics.
“Give me your phone,” I demanded.
“Bridget, this is ridiculous.” She pushed me into the rolling chair behind her desk. Were it not for the fact that she was pregnant, I would’ve fought to remain standing. “You can’t blow through here like this.”
“Autumn, I would not be acting like this if I didn’t think something was seriously wrong,” I told her. “Please, just play the message for me.”
She took her phone from her pocket, scrolled through her messages, and played the one in question on speakerphone. As soon as the familiar voice—a lilting tone with a heavy French accent—permeated the room, I felt as though I had been doused with a bucket of ice water.
“Brigitte.” The voice crackled through a raw, damaged throat.. “This is Noemie Laurent from Paris. I hope you remember me. I have a message for you.” She coughed and began to sing a hoarse, wavering tune. “I am a bumble bee, I like to dance and fly, but if I were to sting someone, I would not be alive.”
Little Girl Lost: Book 0 Page 11